Write On: 'Dune: Part One & Part Two' Screenwriter Jon Spaihts

“In most genre fiction where heroes and villains clash, the hero is intrinsically reactive. The villain starts making trouble and that’s the beginning of the story. If the villain had never showed up, the hero would have lived a pleasant and unremarkable life and had a lovely time. And nothing novel-worthy would have popped up. But the villain comes along and does something terrible and that makes heroic action necessary. So if that’s the function of the hero in the story, to be called to heroic action, then the first conflict that’s readily available to you is reluctance or a sense of being unworthy… and then after that, the hero will be called to take on a new shape and often that will be in response to the shape of the danger, in response to the shape of the wickedness a foot,” says Oscar-nominated screenwriter, Jon Spaihts, about the classic hero-villain relationship in Dune: Part One and Dune: Part Two, based on the books by Frank Herbert. 

In this episode, Jon Spaihts talks about the importance of hand-to-hand combat in mythic storytelling, his favorite scene in Dune 2, and we do a deep dive into his most adored character, Lady Jessica, played by Rebecca Ferguson. We explore the nature of her mystical powers and why she’s so feared by the men in the story. 

Spaihts also shares his advice about what it really means to get personal with your writing. 

“When people say to make your story personal, they don’t really mean look at yourself. You are the least qualified person to say something meaningful about yourself. What people are really talking about is that you should focus on the things that obsess you. You can look at the things that are most plangent to your feelings, that are most itchy and sticky for your intellect, the things you can’t stop thinking about. You can focus on the experiences that have impacted you most profoundly. Those things – the things that push on you and pull on you – that is personal storytelling. You look not at yourself, you look at the things that have moved you, that have affected you, that have changed you, redirected your life and the things that preoccupy you. Those are your seeds of personal storytelling,” says Spaihts.

To hear more about writing Dune 1 and 2, listen to the podcast.